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Grants:Project/Rapid/SuperHamster/Wiki Loves Monuments 2020 in the United States/Report

< Grants:Project | Rapid | SuperHamster/Wiki Loves Monuments 2020 in the United States
Report accepted
This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2017-18 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.
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WLM-US 2020's winner, a photo of the Lower Fox Creek School by Steve Ferro

Goals

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Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

Our project had three main goals:

  • Add or improve content: The United States received over 5,900 uploads, over 800 of which (~14%) are being used on Wikipedia and sister projects. This was in line with our goals (and in the case of usage, exceeded our goal by 4%). By number of uploads, the United States was 11th out of 51 countries—up from 13th in 2019.
  • Recruit new editors: The majority of participants in Wiki Loves Monuments in the United States are first-time contributors. This year, of the 1,062 participants, 890 (84%) were first-time contributors. This was up from 72% in 2019, which is a great increase to see. Wiki Loves Monuments continues to be gateway to contributing for hundreds of people each year.
  • Engage existing editors: Our site notice hits the bulk of editors and anonymous readers in the United States. The majority of our top uploaders are existing (and in many cases, longtime) Commons contributors who are dedicated to photographing U.S. historical sites, which we are incredibly gracious for.

Overall, we met our goal for this project, and as always are thrilled to see people engaged by uploading their photos of historic sites all throughout the country.

Outcome

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Target outcome Achieved outcome Explanation
600 participants 1,062 The United States typically has a high number of participants in Wiki Loves Monuments, and 2020 was no exception; the United States had the most participants of any country this year. This is likely primarily driven by a very large U.S. readership being exposed to our site notice, as well as our audience having access to cameras and the United States having a healthy spread of documented historic sites all throughout the country.
6,000+ uploaded photos 5,905 photos We did actually reach over 6,000 uploads, but a number of photos are deleted each year due to copyright violations, being out of scope, etc. While the final result is technically slightly under our goal, we consider this to be in-line with our expectations and goal.
10% of uploaded photos used on Wikimedia projects 14% (835) of photos used The United States has an incredible number of historical sites registered on the national, state, and local levels, many of which need additional documentation and illustration on Wikipedia. As a result, many uploads are used each year to illustrate articles across various languages of Wikipedia and sister projects.


Learning

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Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

  • What worked well?
We managed to meet our goals, and saw an increase in number of participants and number of uploads compared to the prior year (2019). This was especially nice to see given uncertainties around the pandemic. We believe we have also manged to improve our judging process by refreshing our jury pool; clarifying our jury rules and criteria; scheduling meetings for jury members to discuss images in later judging rounds; and continued to optimized our usage of the Montage judging tool. These changes helped the jury workflow flow more smoothly and resulted in jury members being able to develop better consensus for winning images.
  • What did not work so well?
During the contest, someone reached out to us and noted that we did not have separate categorization available for sovereign Native American land, which is an oversight on our part and limits our ability to engage with people interested in documenting historic sites.
While we have relatively great documentation for historic sites on the National Register of Historic Places (data for which is available on Wikidata and the Wiki Loves Monuments map tool), our tools for discovering state-level and local-level sites are still limited.
  • What would you do differently next time?
For 2021, we plan to include proper categorizations for Native American territories. We would also like to continue to increase our engagement with third-parties (historical societies, mailing list, photography groups, etc.) to get our contest out to more potential participants.

Finances

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Grant funds spent

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Item Budgeted Spent Notes
1st Prize $500 $500 Sent in the form of an Amazon gift card
2nd Prize $350 $350 Sent in the form of an Amazon gift card
3rd Prize $200 $200 Sent in the form of an Amazon gift card
4th-10th Prizes $350 $350 $50 each, sent in the form of Amazon and Visa gift cards
Facebook advertising $40 $40
Twitter advertising $25 $25
Certificate printing $15 $10.72 10 certificates on high-quality paper sent to top-ten placers.
Custom shirts for judges and winners $300 $226.10 Not all jury members and winners wanted a shirt
Poly mailers for shirts $25 $0 Utilized shirt producer's shipping service, poly mailers not needed
Postage $100 $0 Utilized shirt producer's shipping service and leftover stamps from prior years, postage not needed
Total budgeted: $1,905 Total spent: $1,701.82

Remaining funds

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The funds remaining from this grant in the amount of US$203.18 were deducted from another grant payment for Grants:Project/Rapid/SuperHamster/Wiki Loves Monuments 2021 in the United States.

We have $203.18 in remaining funds. We would like this to be applied to our 2021 grant for Wiki Loves Monuments in the United States.

Anything else

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As always, we appreciate the Wikimedia Foundation's support of Wiki Loves Monuments!

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